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Today is quite a day for scummy self promoters claiming they’ve be wronged by government prosecutors, the media, etc.

First there was Richard Hatch. (No, not this one — aka Apollo. This one.) And now, that purveyor of good taste, “Girls Gone Wild” mogul Joe Francis, is bitching because he got slapped with heavier than expected fines and penalties for making obscene profits by getting drunk underage girls to take their shirts off for a bunch of late-night dorks too cheap to spring for real porn.

His fine is 200 hours of community service, two years probation, and $500,000. That’s on top of 32 hours of CS per month for 30 months and $1.6 million in penalties he got in a related Florida case. That’s 1,160 hours of community service in all.

Outside the courthouse, Francis said he was relieved the process was over and that he now felt free to say that he had been unfairly persecuted by the Justice Department. “Of course I’ve been unfairly targeted by the government,” Francis said. “What better target than Joe Francis?”

What better indeed. Let’s hope they make him clean stadium urinals or something else suitably nasty.

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